


Seven minutes

by Tyellas



Series: Lab T-4 [11]
Category: The Shape of Water (2017)
Genre: Action, Drama, Friendship, Gap Filler, Gen, Mid-Movie Spoilers, in all the excitement someone's a little smitten too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 14:59:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13526709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas
Summary: After a daring heist at Occam's loading dock, listening to shots ring out, Dr. Hoffstetler is feeling all right.





	Seven minutes

**Author's Note:**

> My second viewing of the film insipired this short. Anyone else see Hoffstetler and Zelda run off together as Giles drove Elisa and the creature away? Exciting! Surely something happened next, so here it is.

Hoffstettler is electric, alive, mind and body blazing together. This is what the second, secret half of his life is all about.

He is on Occam’s bleak loading dock, in a cloud of exhaust. The creature is in the van, the driver reeling away. Hoffstetler checks his watch: 5:05 AM. He hears shouting. He and his one remaining conspirator have to move fast. He reaches for Zelda’s arm as she grabs his, thinking alike. She says, “Come on! Service door!”

When they are through it, Zelda immediately turns and puts her ear to that same door. Hoffstetler tries to pull her on. Zelda shakes her head firmly, muttering, “She’s my friend. I got to know if she's safe.”

He is stabbed with envy of Elisa. To be an agent, yet have a friend like this woman! He checks the door’s hinges. It opens outwards. They will be exposed if they are found. As he turns to check the other side, he brushes Zelda’s soft mohair coat. He realizes he’s next to a voluptuous, perfumed woman.

Zelda reacts to their proximity at the same time. Briskly, she mutters, “No funny stuff. I’m married.”

Hoffstetler steps back. A married woman: the last thing he needs. He loves the exquisite tension around married women far more than a good man should. Their sadness and secrets, their beauty waiting to blossom again. They rouse his deeply buried rebellious streak. But Occam is not the place, not with the cruel, vulgar undercurrent among the men here. America's not the place, with its prejudiced laws barring so many kinds of love.

And this is definitely not the time, as shots ring out in the garage.

Zelda gasps, “No!”

As she reaches for the door’s handle, Hoffstetler blocks her, gently. “Wait. Listen. They didn’t hit their target.” The firearm had only been a pistol. How useless the American military police were, for all their muscle and bluster.

Zelda turns inside his arm. “You sure?”

“Yes.” As a Russian spy, he knows the sickening telltales of a shot that’s hit home.

Strickland’s calling orders out there, his carefully suppressed drawl breaking through. He feels Zelda start at the man’s voice. Hoffstetler is still. The contrary part of him anticipates the next time he looks Strickland in the eye. They stand there for another few minutes, listening to military police shouting at each other as they case the loading dock and garage.

Hoffstetler’s heart leaps at last as someone tries the service door. He lifts his arm higher, turns his body, whispers to the scented hair above Zelda’s ear. “No disrespect. This way, they shoot me.” She gasps again, the barest breath. Yet he feels himself smiling. This is what he’s been promised all along as a spy. The desperate stand for the true cause, with the best of comrades. The satisfaction of either success or noble sacrifice. It is as fulfilling as its promise, his veins blazing with cool adrenaline, his thoughts and actions close to one. Ironic, then, that this has come to him by following no authority but the rebellious streak inside him.

Three feet away, someone barks, “Locked, sir. Can’t have gone this way.”

Strickland’s response is impossibly filthy. They hear military boots scuffling, fading out.

When there is silence, Hoffstetler steps away from Zelda. “Thank you for locking it.”

“I didn’t. They’re just too dumb to pull as well as push.” Zelda starts to laugh, but it turns into a sadder sound than that. “Jesus…we got lucky. Someone-looking-out-for-us lucky. Guess we aren't going to hell for this.” She brushes her hand over her eyes.

He offers her a clean handkerchief, puts his hands behind his back. This done, he becomes very interested in the opposite wall for a moment. Finally, he mumbles, “Again, we should move. Where might we leave this corridor?” If any of the Occam security idiots are worth their capitalist pay, they will enter these service halls soon, seeking a fuse box, finding a popper.

Zelda dabs one cheek and tilts her chin. They go up the corridor together. When Zelda opens a door, it takes them out into a tool room. The tool boxes and white coveralls give Zelda back her voice. “Someone finds us, I’m trying to help you find one of…one of the plumbing types.”

“Good thinking,” he nods.

Suddenly, Zelda rounds on him. “Why’d you help? What’s it to you?”

Hoffstetler realizes that, for all that they’ve shared, he is not out of danger yet. If this woman has any regrets, he is vulnerable. Yet she had spoken of friendship, true comradeship, before anything. He tries to appeal to her humanity with his own, opening his hands. “I feel…that creature deserves to live…”

Zelda gives him a knowing look. “So you’re his friend like I’m hers.”

Hoffstetler vents a sigh, regretting so much about the past few weeks. “I would have liked to be.”

Zelda sways back to rest herself on a stack of wooden boxes. “Lord, my feet. What’re you going to do now?”

Suddenly, he’s drained. Either he’ll sleep like the dead or he’ll never sleep again. He’s got to get ready to lie to his masters like he’s been lying to everyone at Occam. Clinging to this last honest conversation, he tells Zelda more of the truth. “I’m going to go home and have a piece of cake. My mother’s recipe.”

The corners of her mouth lift. “Cake for breakfast…Elisa’s always telling me how she has pie for breakfast. How she stays so skinny, I swear I don’t know.”

Hoffstetler pats his solid stomach. “I don’t know her secrets, either.”

Her full smile shines. “Whatever they are, you’ve both got the same crazy going on.” In the warmth of her approval, Hoffstetler understands why the men in white overalls, even Fleming, let Zelda order them about. He lets himself picture taking a comrade out for a drink somewhere civilized, the Havana waterfront, a riverside café back in Minsk. Even as he pictures that, he lets it go, like he’s let the creature go: something wonderful for somebody braver.

He steps to the tool room’s door. “Ladies first? I will wait a moment more, then go my own way.”

“I think we’re in good hands tonight.” Zelda rises, progresses to the door, gives him back his handkerchief at arm’s length. The main hallway’s light outlines her in her golden coat as she turns back to him. “Get home to your mama’s cake safe, now.”

It isn’t in him to smile, not with what he’s facing. He manages a small salute as he holds the door. And folds the handkerchief carefully, to avoid creasing an imprint from her lips. As he does, he checks his watch: 5:12 AM. After everything he's gotten away with, he'll be signing out late. He sighs and tucks the handkerchief back, leaving the tool room to face the future.


End file.
